PRI’s The World produced a series of reports on migration last year centering on the story of one Somalian man fleeing war. Read and listen here, and learn how Gaddafi's thugs went about preventing migrants from reaching the EU.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Iranian blogger Pedestrian writes today in reaction to a TV report on how Egyptian demonstrators organised and prepared for protest:

Of course, I couldn’t help but compare their situation to Iran, when actions of this sort would never be possible. (Ahmed would have been imprisoned and tortured for attending the workshops, for “treason and attempting to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran” long before he could put what he learned to use).

But the very interesting methods they employ during protest: they set up first aid centers, they give out food, they prepare eye drops for the tear gas, they hug militias, they have a functional group which stands strong even when one or two of them are taken into custody, etc, etc, … none of this would ever be barely imaginable in Iran or in any place where the state killing machine is leagues more lethal and vicious.

You see, it’s not just the protesters who were nonviolent, the militias stopped attacking during prayer. Fighting, like shopping in a bazaar or a first date, is a social negotiation first and foremost where conflicting worldviews translate to physical maneuvers.

This isn’t to say that outright violence is going to get anyone anywhere. But rather, quite the opposite, in what sort of setting does nonviolence as a strategy even make sense? Does it in the case of Iran?

Earlier on this blog, a post on John Runnings, an American peace activist strongly influenced by him, and a second post also mentioning Gene Sharp.

As the SWJ is paying attention to Gene Sharp, will the next big thing after COIN for the US military be training in use of non-violent strategy and tactics? It surely has a place if a force is to have full spectrum capability.

Non-violence does not necessarily indicate virtue. It is possible for organisations to adopt tactical non-violence without signing up to to a pure non-violence strategy, just as it’s possible for organisations like Hamas or previously the IRA to use both democratic and terrorist methods. From John Runnings’ writing:

There is a form of non-military strife that can register outrage that is no physical threat to the opponent. This means is overlooked by those who assume that resistance must be passive when applied to resistance to the military. This form of non-military strife was used by Tshombe in 1962 when he was trying to secede Katanga from the Congo, as reported by U. Thant in his book, VIEW FROM THE U.N. (pg. 140).

“It was in Finland, where I arrived on the night of July 11, 1962, that I received the most disturbing news from the Congo. The message was to the effect that Mr. Tshombe had changed his tactics.

On that day, a planned and viciously conceived assault by thousands of Katangese women and children was made on Indian troops at a roadblock in Elisabethville. These troops - cursed, abused and spat upon by the Tshombe-organized women and children - displayed a most remarkable restraint and discipline under extreme provocation, and never fired on the mob. I also received report from Robert Gardener, United Nations representative in the Congo, that Mr. Tshombe had informed him that he would employ civilian demonstrations, especially women and children, instead of troops, to provoke the United Nations force, in cynical contempt for the safety and well-being of his own people. This change of tactics posed new problems for the force and put a very great strain on the troops.”

I was disappointed in U. Thant that he failed to admire the courage displayed by the women and children that were able to stand up to armed threat of the United Nations of the world and defy them. He later spoke of Tshombe and his colleagues as “a bunch of clowns”. (I would propose that some of the attributes of the clown might be encouraged in anti-warriors. The charm of the clown is that they do the unconventional with elan, to make people laugh, in contrast to the military whose efforts are seldom amusing.)

And suppose Saddam Hussein had withdrawn his military, and sent women and children to occupy the Iraq-Kuwait border to get in the way and to spit upon the American tanks and soldiers. Would Clinton have had the political climate to fire on them? What fun the world media could then have had, showing the United States military in confrontation with little boys trying to spit on the tanks, though they had not yet learned to spit over their chin?

This is not to play down the many virtues of Gandhi’s more pacifist approach. But it is important to know that vulnerable challenge may be successfully used by people who are not saints(...)

It’s an enormously provocative step. There are desperate men, willing to gamble the fate of the nation for their own personal interest. It's a very sad historic moment for Egypt.

The speeches tonight are not intended to bring an end to the crisis in a peaceful way but to inflame the situation so there is justification for the imposition of direct military rule. They are risking not only the coherence of the military but even indeed, and I use this term with advisement here, civil war.

I think it needs to be made perfectly clear (by outside powers) that Mubarak and his regime are forfeiting Egypt’s future. Egypt is in an economic crisis. It is going to have to be bailed out and the short answer to what they are doing now is that it will not be bailed out with anything like a military regime in place that is associated with Mubarak, Omar Suleiman and these people who are part of this regime.

CIA Director Leon Panetta was forced to clarify his statement earlier today when he said, “I have heard there's a strong likelihood Mubarak will step down this evening,” explaining that his comment was based on news reports, not intelligence data.

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

The heroes are the ones in the street. The heroes are each one of us. There’s no one on a horse, smacking his saddle and moving the people. Don’t let anyone deceive you and tell you that. This is the revolution of the youth of the internet. This is the revolution of the youth of the internet, which then became the revolution of the youth of Egypt. And now it’s become the revolution of all of Egypt. There is no hero here, and there is no one who should take the seal. We are all heroes. That’s it.

In case you haven’t yet seen the Dream TV interview with Wael Ghonim following his release Monday, you can watch and read about it in this post at The New York Times news blog, The Lede. An alternative translation is available as a YouTube playlist here, but I think it’s incomplete. Wael Ghonim’s Twitter feed is here. Today’s clips of his CNN interview and his address at Tahrir Square are in today’s live blog on Egypt by The New York Times.

See also EA WorldView for more on this and other events, including new protests in previously quiet Upper Egypt, new strikes, and a new focus of protest in Cairo outside the Parliament. More on the Parliament protest in this NY Times video. Reports on Monday described a government strategy of constraining and isolating the Tahrir Square protest, while normalising the rest of the city. The Parliament protest is one way of countering that. Egypt’s decentralised mass movement is not playing chess, it’s playing Go.

As popular anger against the Egyptian regime swelled last month, Saeed was locked up in a prison at a Cairo police station. The station's chief approached him with a bargain: Saeed would attack and help disperse the protesters that were converging on Cairo's Tahrir Square—and in return, Saeed recalled, the chief would erase the drug and illegal-arms-possession charges pending against him.

Despite the tenacity, optimism, and blood of the protesters massed in Tahrir Square, Egypt's democratic window has probably already closed.
[...]
Although many of the protesters, foreign governments, and analysts have concentrated on the personality of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, those surrounding the embattled president, who make up the wider Egyptian regime, have made sure the state's viability was never in question. This is because the country's central institution, the military, which historically has influenced policy and commands near-monopolistic economic interests, has never balked.

To the question, is the army on the side of the people, or on the side of the regime, the answer always has to be the army is on the side of the army. The real question always was and still is, where does the army believe its interests lie? Not with Mubarak for much longer, but then what? It depends on how strong the forces of change are. If those forces are strong enough, the army will change in order to preserve itself.

The army is not an individual, but a group, and it cannot wholly isolate itself from wider changes in the nation, and in the global culture. The national culture has shown itself to be capable of radical changes, and those changes are obviously linked to broad long term escalating international technological and cultural forces.

Alongside that, the army’s closest international ally is the US, and this must be important culturally as well as economically. How do younger members of the Egyptian military regard their organisation compared with the US military: the world’s most advanced, and under democratic control?

The army entered the square. But in this future-now world everywhere becomes part of the public square, even the army, even the barracks. Change won’t be shut out.

There was no doubt that the army was in charge of the raid. At one point, a major general showed up at the Hisham Mubarak center and other officers worked hand in glove with a uniformed policeman, plainclothes state security agents and assorted abusive henchmen.

This exchange between David Brooks and Gail Collins at The New York Times site lays out an optimistic view on wider implications for the Middle East, and it’s an optimism I share for what that’s worth.

But the Middle East is not the only context. Tunisia and Egypt are African countries. From an editorial in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian:

. . . the tinder was stacked dry and ready for decades in Egypt. The levels of poverty, frustration and repression are if anything higher further south. Is it too much to hope that Africans choose to treat the Egyptian and Tunisian protests, with all their peril and potential, as our own?

Early-morning gunfire has rung out around Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, killing several people. Sustained bursts of fire lasted for two hours as anti-government demonstrators tried to stay in control of the square.

After seeing Mubarak shut down phone, internet, and train services, and attempt to maintain rule through mob violence and murder on the streets, can anyone still seriously argue that he stands for stability?

Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip are concerned about the effects of the upheaval in the Arab world, as Facebook messages call on Gaza residents to demonstrate against Hamas rule on Friday.

Several thousand people have joined the Facebook group calling for a protest against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip. Another Facebook group is calling for protests against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Far fewer people have expressed interest in that page, but Palestinian leaders in the West Bank also recognize that the protests in Tunisia and Egypt could spill over into Palestinian territory.

In what seems to be an effort to hold off possible demonstrations, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority will hold municipal elections in the near future, and senior Fatah officials said they are considering general elections as well.

In Gaza City, Hamas police used force earlier this week to disperse a small rally showing solidarity with Egyptian protesters. Police officers dressed in civilian clothing arrested six women and detained some 20 others, according to Human Rights Watch.

The women were taken to a police station, where policewomen insulted them and slapped one of them during an interrogation, according to the report. The protesters were told not to demonstrate again without Hamas police authorization.